Prints grew from a century of drawingWorks of art on paper have a long history on the Northwest Coast . By the 1870s, artists had begun drawing on paper, largely in response to the requests of anthropologists and other collectors. In 1927, Kwakwaka'wakw artist Charlie James and his granddaughter Ellen Neel painted in watercolor a series of crest figures on paper. Mungo Martin and Henry Speck continued this tradition in the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time a few artists were experimenting with printing multiples of designs. The two-dimensional design system and color separation of Northwest Coast art lends itself to the serigraph technique, squeegeeing ink past a stencil through a stretched silk screen.

Pioneering print artistsA handful of artists such as Robert Davidson (Haida), Joe David (Nuu-chah-nulth), and Tony Hunt (Kwakwaka'wakw) worked starting in the late 1960s to elevate silk screen printing to a fine art form. This led to the production of high-quality, signed, and numbered limited-edition silk screen prints. Native art training programs such as the Kitanmax School of Northwest Coast Indian Art in at near Hazelton , British Columbia , have helped to promote the market for prints. Artists such as Stan Greene and Susan Point were the pioneers of Coast Salish printmaking starting in the late 1970s.

Prints are more than a commercial art form

Silk screen prints have become important tools for communication in Northwest Coast Native culture, providing a lens through which artists have been able to focus public attention on pivotal political and environmental issues. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing today, silk screen prints have been made and used by Native people for ceremonial purposes, and have come to be firmly incorporated into Northwest Coast culture. Within the last 40 years, silk screen prints have become important as potlatch gifts as well as a major source of income for many artists, in some cases helping to fund political and ceremonial activities